Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell couldn’t stop laughing at President Donald Trump‘s obsession with pencils, dolls, and a notorious 20th-century prison on Monday night.
Maddow’s nightly stint at MSNBC concluded on Monday night, shortly after Trump marked his first 100 days back in office. Starting Tuesday, her 9 p.m. Eastern time slot will be taken over by former Biden spokesperson Jen Psaki.
As Maddow handed off her eponymous show to O’Donnell, she mocked Trump’s comments to NBC News over the weekend, which downplayed concerns that his market-crashing tariffs would lead to empty store shelves by the holiday season.
“I’m just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls; they can have three,” Trump said of children who might be in for a sad Christmas season. “They don’t need to have 250 pencils; they can have five.”
Maddow wondered whether Trump thinks that the prices of pencils and dolls are top of mind for parents in the U.S.
“The idea that he thinks that, if you’re raising a kid right now in 2025 in the United States of America, the thing you’re most thinking about is pencils and dolls,” she said with a laugh. “It’s just a remarkable window into his mind.”
“The most charitable thing that can be said about that is that he’s a 20th-century guy,” O’Donnell replied in an apparent nod to Trump’s interest in reopening the Alcatraz prison that used to house dangerous, high-profile criminals.
Trump appeared nostalgic for the 20th century in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
“When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm,” he wrote. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
Trump later told reporters that Alcatraz has “got quite a history” as he confirmed that the administration was looking into a possible reopening.
